


Futile Devices

by Highsmith (quimtessence)



Category: Shadowscapes Tarot
Genre: Anthropomorphism - Freeform, Chocolate Box 2018, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Making Up My Canon as I Go Along, Not Real History, Tarot, Tarot Cards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 08:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13609578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quimtessence/pseuds/Highsmith
Summary: About Victory, in a way.





	Futile Devices

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mementomoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mementomoe/gifts).



> Title by Sufjan Stevens.

A great, eager crowd had gathered that middle of the morning to look on them with equal measures of awe and fear.

The both of them wore their brightest garb to impress upon the assembled folk the wealth of their respective kingdoms, to leave no doubt in anyone's mind of where they, alone, stood: Above, in both form and station.

Wands was already spectacularly bored with the whole bloody spectacle of it all. Don't get him wrong—he most definitely stood above the rest. Having to prove himself after too little rest and too plentiful a mead the night before was not, however, his idea of fun. The stench of his sub-par stead was not helping matters any.

The same could be said for Cups's face. Wands wished he could relax his fist in the softness of a rival Knight's cheek, and, even from a distance, Cups seemed to have a most punchable face. Alas, Wands had been told in no uncertain terms by his Queen that violence outside the jousting rink would not be tolerated. Sadly, the rink only hosted a demure sort of violence, on horseback and with sticks, almost as if they were children play-fighting in the filthy streets of the Citadel.

If he were permitted to ride his mighty copper beauty, the true Lionfox, to advance with his crimson staff against any rival Knight... Well. If only.

*

If only Victory were for ever and ever as sweet as _this_. Wands felt at that precise moment one could hardly ask for more from Fate Herself than to witness one's rival defeated at the last, after a worthy battle, the crowds alight with it. His hands trembled but for an instant on his lance, _la mêlée_ finally finished, the victor astride his stead.

Cups lay on the dusty ground below, his golden armour necessarily mucked, his foamy mare restlessly stomping the ground beside him. Wands almost pitied him in his overwrought recklessness, now done and done, slipped away as Victory had but moments beforehand.

For a quarter of an instant, a mere half-blink, Wands thought he had seen a bonfire of true wrath in Cups's eyes. The next instant the look had been gone, and Wands no longer knew if he had dreamt that passion and that will, or perhaps had seen his own reflected back at him. No matter.

*

They had offered him a seat before the hearth, a jewelled cup spilling mead over its golden rim, and company likely to bring lesser men to their knees. Wands was completely and utterly bored with it all. Truly, this Fate-forsaken country knew not the concept of merriment.

His landlady winked in his general direction with a half-smile thrown in, but Wands figured her mirth was hardly due to his mere presence. This proved true when Cups, followed by his rowdy companions, crossed the threshold amid bubbly cheers from those already assembled. Wands stared intently into the flames. He would truly have no respite, it seemed. Wands damned his loyalty to a Queen who knew not the physical pain mere idiocy caused him.

Unwilling to make his excuses so early in the evening and lose face in front of those assembled, including part of his own travelling court, Wands motioned his landlady for another cup of mead. The Fates were truly not in his favour.

*

Fate was a wily vixen more likely to roast you over a spit than look upon you.

The grimy brick was a constant roughness between Wands's shoulder blades, a constant reminder this past quarter of the hour that he had permitted Cups to lead him with but a dark look down a dank corridor to a foul-smelling but discreet alleyway in back of the very establishment Wands had promised himself to depart upon reaching the bottom of his cup. Wands was currently endeavouring to reach the depths for a vastly different Cup, yet the very notion that they had sequestered themselves for so long alone and engaged made him dizzy. Or perhaps that was due to Cups valiantly attempting to sip as many kisses as humanly possible with the least amount of breath.

Wands was well and truly caught. The instant he endeavoured to escape, his own limbs drew him back with exalted treachery in every gesture, in every thought.

Nearby, a clock tower rang the half-hour.


End file.
